physically
by leradny
Summary: It's there. You just can't see it because of the waffles in the way.


_physically_

-  
Tomorrow was Wednesday and there was nothing they could do about it.

Just like they could do nothing about the fact that a door was a ridiculous thing to have between two people in the midst of a heart to heart conversation. If it had been a strawberry milkshake, then one of them could have sipped at it nervously in a ridiculous attempt to avoid the impossible, that saying I will love you forever and ever was a lie because he/she would not love him/her forever, they would both die before that--completely and utterly die.

But there was something about the door that was inherently special.

This was Raven's door, which could neither be pushed nor pulled to be opened but instead had to slide to the right (_her_ right), and if one had tried to do that then one would look very awkward indeed because there was no handle on the door. One would have to depend on the friction of his/her hands to keep their nonexistant grasp on the steel.

Robin loved this door because it held the key to all the mysteries in Titans Tower that Dick Grayson could not solve. Not even Robin, protege and future usurper of the Greatest Detective in the World.

Robin loved _mysteries_, and Raven was a bit like an open book in the fact that he had just turned to the first page, where the mysteries were yet to be solved or even hinted at, where the detective was eating his waffles in the cold, solid, dim light of morning before someone brought him the message that--oh my god!--someone important but most likely literary figure had been murdered.

Raven was also like an open book in the fact that, one year ago, her body had glowed with birthmarks in a strange and unnatural language that Robin could not read.

Slade had opened her first, turned to the title page of Raven: Mystic Goth, or some other page that Robin had not read, and it was rather surprising that she had not lost all trust in men while in the condition that Robin had rescued her in--halfway stripped, and unconscious.

Ugh.

Robin had long since stopped pretending that his legs were not tired after waiting for Raven to answer, and he knew better than to pretend she was asleep. Raven never slept, or he never caught her anyway. Robin had also stopped pretending that the door would suddenly open automatically, because even though that was what it was _supposed_ to do--the sensors were under his feet right now, sensing him--Raven stopped it with telekinesis three times out of four.

So one: she was awake. And two: she did not want to answer.

"Raven!" he tried again, bravely.

No answer.

Why in the world was she not answering?

"Cyborg's making waffles," Robin said, in a vain attempt to lure her out.

But Raven was neither a waffle-eating fish, to be lured out by the bait, and nor was she a waffle-eating human (or so it seemed), so she did not answer.

"For your birthday," Robin went on, and cringed as he heard himself speak. Considering what had happened on Raven's other birthday, it was probably and most likely not the right thing to say.

The door opened.

"Go. Away."

Then it snapped shut again, and Robin felt it snap all his hopes and dreams into useless grey mush--as if each of his fingers had been caught in seperate doors and broken in several places.

Trust, like a waffle, is one of the most curious things on the face of the earth for the simple reason that it takes a very long time to prepare either of them, and that the longer it takes to make that waffle the shorter it takes to consume it.There is also the fact that both are usually cemented with love.

And no amount of five-second rules will ever save you when that trust you've so carefully built up goes crashing to the floor face down in butter and syrup, leaving you completely and utterly _alone_ and _without any breakfast_.

It was probably the worst day in Robin's life. And possibly Raven's as well, despite the aroma of Cyborg's famous waffles wafting up to reach them even here, in front of a room two stories above the kitchen and very far away.

This was why Robin decided not to leave, and rather than turn around to hang his head in disappointment, he merely turned around and sat with his back to the door.

"I can sit out here all day, Raven," he called, as if it was either a threat or a challenge, which was not the right thing to say. "I'm not leaving until you come out."

"No," Raven said, although it was muffled and might have been, "So?"

Robin didn't move in the face of her indifference, even though the smell of the waffles and his very hungry stomach were demanding to be united with each other _right now_. "Come on, Raven, what could possibly happen?"

"The end of the world could happen," Raven snapped, just like the door had, although only a solid _warning_ that the apocalypse was near had arrived on her birthday, and the end of the world had come much later after an unsuccessful attempt at making pancakes instead of waffles.

Silence. Except for the sound of the waffles being eaten and Cyborg's tinny voice ringing through the hallways: "Come _on_, guys, Star and BB are eating them all!"

"Come on, Raven," Robin said, to the wall across from Raven's room. "You heard what Cyborg said--let's go."

"No."

Silence. Robin struggled.

It seemed that, again and again, Raven would relapse into saying the same answer and Robin would ask the same question, and it was a vicious cycle they would never, ever leave until Robin actually dragged Raven out of her room, which would not be a gentlemanly resort. It could end up with Robin ripping Raven's cloak off her back and exposing the raw, untouchable, blistering skin of her stomach and arms, the very thing Slade had done one year ago.

History, like this story, tends to repeat itself. Over and over.

"Raven?" Robin tried, this time taking on a much softer tone in an attempt to avoid dragging Raven out of her room.

"What?" But Raven's words were harder than diamonds and much less pretty to look at.

"I..." Robin swallowed an imaginary waffle and went on, "I want to take you... someplace far away from here."

The silence rang. Like diamonds.

"For your birthday."

_Ring._

"And if you don't come out right now I might never be able to take you again."

The door slid open in a flash of black fire, then slid shut before Robin could get up or even lose his balance after losing his support.

"Where would you take me?" Raven's words were much softer this time, like crow feathers.

"What's the farthest place you can think of?" Robin countered, ignoring the fact that it was a question, not an answer, and the second one in a row.

"Ha." Raven laughed, but it sounded more like a cough or a sob. "_Hmmph_... Azarath."

"Then I'll take you there," Robin said, although it was the wrong thing to say.

A lightbulb exploded.

"You can't," Raven said, sounding sadder by the minute. Robin expected her face was falling as well, dropping to the floor. "It's only in my dreams."

Aha, so Raven _did_ sleep.

"Then I'll take you to Gotham," Robin said, although that was the wrong answer. The farthest place from Jump City was Tamaran, or possibly some other planet with equally freakish sentient beings they had not come to call their friends.

The farthest places were Saturn, and Pluto, and all the other ice planets that Robin had no interest in.

The farthest place he could think of was Raven's mind, which was probably only three feet away from him because although there was a door between them Raven had an annoyingly large personal space bubble.

Then Robin heard the curious sound of cloak shifting against the door, and the small thump of a small body contacting the floor.

"What was it like?" Raven asked.

"What was what like?"

"In Gotham," Raven finished, and Robin forgot about his waffles. Which were probably and most likely being voraciously eaten by a Tamaranian princess and a shapeshifting vegetarian teenager and a Cyborg.

"It was..."

Contrary to whatever the readers may believe, Robin had not trailed off two words into his sentence like he had done several minutes ago on this very day, within this very hour. The author had just gotten bored.

Robin told Raven about Gotham and Raven told Robin about Azarath, her homeland with the shiny, shiny temples and white clothes and pacifists (who did not shine in the sun as their temples did on occasion but dressed up in white all the time to pretend they did). Dark, dark, dark, dark places and alleys where no one could find peace until the dark, dark, dark, dark Knight and his traffic-light sidekick brightened things up.

Opposite places.

Opposite people.

Opposite sides of the door.

It was a silly, cliche conversation that ended with Raven opening the door and saying, "Shall we?"

Robin blinked stupidly, then said (just as stupidly), "Shall we what?"

"Shall we _dance_," Raven snapped, then smacked Robin on the back of the head as he stood up. "Shall we go down to the kitchen and have some of those waffles you've been cajoling me into coming out of my _room_ for, Boy Wonder? It's been an hour."

Robin rolled his eyes and rubbed the back of his head where Raven had broken character, then said snarkily, "Two hours."

Actually it had been an hour and forty-five minutes.

So Robin took Raven's arm like a gentleman, and they got halfway down the stairs arm in arm before Raven pulled away from him and ran for the kitchen like she was embarrassed. Like this entire thing was one of those horrible dreams she kept having that didn't involve her father.

"If you didn't leave any waffles for _me_," Raven started, then stopped moving as she stopped speaking.

There were exactly two waffles on two plates, still relatively warm (although not as warm as they could have been), and a note scribbled on paper in the centre of the table, between two knives and two forks. Like a centrepiece, only far less attractive and romantic.

Raven picked the note up and read it out loud. "Thought you two should have at least one waffle for yourselves," the note read. "Out of the goodness of my heart I restrained Beast Boy and Starfire from eating these last two. You owe me big. Cy."

She crumpled it up and black telekinesis helped it on its way to the trash. "Whatever."

Robin scowled. "Cyborg had about fifty waffles cooked up for us all, and if you'd given in earlier we might have gotten more."

Raven sat down and picked up her fork. "One is enough." She stared at the waffle. On second thought, she picked up her knife.

It was neither a challenge nor a chastisement, but Robin felt himself cringe as he sat down and started eating his singular-and-not-plural waffle.

It felt like...

The paper-cold, syrup-drowning waffle _tasted_ like...

He was _eating_ Raven's trust.

-  
**Things that You, the Reader, Should Know:** Okay, I admit that I fell a little too hard into the Lemony Snicket-esque writing here... but I just could not resist.

Also, from now on there will be certain sequences--words or phrases or dialogue--that I will be repeating in each chapter. It will not only be within the chapter, but it may be echoing another, previous chapter.

So points to people who spot those and mention it in their reviews.


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